


brown-eyed girl

by IWasMeantToFeel



Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Carmilla - All Media Types, Carmilla - J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Genre: AU, Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Romance, cat!carmilla - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 04:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4946215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IWasMeantToFeel/pseuds/IWasMeantToFeel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"a kitten turned up at my apartment last night and I told it how I feel about you and now you’re at my door asking me to come to yours for breakfast isn’t that a weird coincidence" au</p>
            </blockquote>





	brown-eyed girl

**Author's Note:**

> Pure fluff and I'm not ashamed of it. Also a lot of kitten love and Catmilla :)

It’s a Friday night, nearly midnight, and earlier Laura had turned down an invitation to go out with the gang in favour of finishing her article for the local newspaper. It’s giving her a lot of grief, mainly because she couldn’t really care less about how the social life of polar bears, but, as she’d said to Danny on the phone that evening, this could be the one that led to her big break. Currently she’s an out-of-work journalist who does early morning shifts in the coffee shop down the road, but who knows, this article could rocket her to fame and fortune. If she could stop procrastinating and just finish it. 

A welcome distraction comes in the form of something tapping at her bedroom window, and she gratefully hurries over to investigate. It’s a little black kitten, pawing at the glass and shoving its pink nose up against it to get her attention. Laura laughs, and opens the window. It’s freezing outside, she discovers. The poor thing must be so cold. It cocks its head to one side and looks at her, as if asking permission to come in. Laura smiles at its adorableness and picks it up, shutting the window behind it and snuggling it into her arms.

“Look at you, you’re so cute,” she murmurs, stroking it and scratching behind its ears. It looks indignant as being called cute, and Laura thinks she sees an almost human look in its big brown eyes, until she finds a place behind its left ear that it obviously really likes having rubbed, and it purrs contentedly and burrows into her chest. Its sleek ebony fur is freezing cold, and she tries to warm the little ball of fluff with her hands.

“Do you belong to the girl next door?” Laura asks. Obviously she doesn’t expect it to reply, but she’s always had a thing about talking to animals. The cat meows. “I’ve always thought she looks interesting, when I see her leaving in the morning and stuff. I’d like to be friends with her, but she’s not very approachable. Hey, maybe I could use returning you as an excuse to talk to her?” The cat looks up at her again, blinking those huge eyes a few times. “You’re so adorable,” Laura grins. “I bet you’re hungry.” She sets the kitten down on her bed and it hisses in protest. “I’m just going to get you some milk.”

Laura gets a bowl from the cupboard and fills it with milk, smiling as she thinks of what her friends would say if they could see her right now, ditching dancing and drinking in favour of cuddling a random cat. When she returns to her bedroom, the cat is pushing its face into her favourite yellow pillow and rubbing its fur all over it. It springs up when it sees the bowl in her hand, and jumps into her lap to lap at it, its tiny pink tongue flicking in and out. She sighs.

“Sometimes I hear the girl next door crying at night,” she says. It’s the first time she’s said this out loud. She knows that her friends reactions would be ‘so what?’ or ‘you don’t even know her’, but those soft sobs and restless turning over that she can hear through the wall during the early hours of the morning really get to her. The kitten stops drinking like it’s really listening, so she carries on. “I wish that I was her friend so I could go round and find out what was wrong and comfort her. Is that weird?”

The cat doesn’t make a sound.

“It’s strange that I spend every night lying right next to her and know nothing about her,” Laura sighs. “I’ll stop talking now. I bet you’re sleepy.” The cat purrs, so Laura shuts her laptop and climbs into bed, patting her pillow. The cat bounds over, but not to the pillow - it curls up in Laura’s hair between her cheek and the dip of her collarbone and makes a contented noise. She reaches up to stroke it. “Good night,” she says, and switches off the light. Normally it takes her hours to fall asleep, unable to turn off her thoughts and anxieties and unable to stop listening to the quiet whimpers of the girl separated from her only by a wall, but tonight, with the cat’s rhythmic breathing in her ear, her eyes close almost straight away.

 

In the morning the cat’s gone, leaving only black hairs and a cold bed behind. Laura feels something like disappointment as she gets dressed and sits back down in front of her laptop. Now she doesn’t have an excuse to go and talk to the girl next door and she’ll probably never meet her. She stares at the blinking cursor in her Word document for so long that her eyes blur. Stupid article. Suddenly there’s a knock on the door - yet another welcome distraction. She opens it probably over-eagerly, guessing that it’s the postman bringing her delivery of books, but she’s faced with a gorgeous brunette with warm chocolate coloured eye, pale skin and… leather pants? It’s the girl from next door.

She realises she’s staring when the girl says, “Um, hello?”

“Hi!” Laura replies brightly, dragging her eyes up to the girl’s face. “Sorry, didn’t get much sleep. You live next door, don’t you? I see you sometimes.”

The girl smirks, and Laura’s eyes are drawn to her (perfect) lips. “You talk fast, don’t you?” she says, and 'holy shit her voice', Laura thinks. It’s the perfect mix of slow, seductive and mysterious. She could definitely get used to listening to it.

“Yeah, I’ve been told. Sorry!”

“No need to apologise. I’m Carmilla.”

“Carmilla,” Laura says slowly, because it’s an utterly beautiful name and it suits her so well and she wants to hear how it sounds when she says it. Then she blushes, realising that she said that out loud.

“Yes, Carmilla.” The girl smirks again, and it’s as if she knows what she’s doing. Maybe she does. It’s the first time Laura’s ever been face to face with her and she doesn’t know if this is normal behaviour for her.

“I’m Laura. I think your cat was in my apartment last night. I was going to bring it round this morning but it disappeared in the night.”

“I don’t have a cat, cupcake.”

Cupcake?

“You don’t? Oh, I guess it was a stray then. It was the most beautiful cat I’ve ever seen.”

“Hmmm,” Carmilla says, thoughtfully.

“Any reason you knocked on my door, or were you just saying hi? I mean, don’t go away or anything but did you want something or…” Laura’s nervous babbling trails off when she realises that Carmilla looks amused.

“Slow down, cutie, I can’t keep up.”

“Sorry.” Laura bites her lip, and wonders if she’s imagining the fact that Carmilla’s eyes are drawn to the action.

“I was wondering if you wanted to come have breakfast with me? A friend of mine was meant to be coming over but they cancelled last minute, and I have a few too many croissants for one person.”

“Oh!” Of all things, being invited over for breakfast was not what she had expected. “Yes. I’d love that.”

Carmilla smiles slowly. “Come on, then.”

 

That night, as Laura gets ready for bed, she thinks about her day, and how she spent almost all of it with Carmilla, talking and laughing and watching movies, and even reading (something none of her friends would ever let her do when they were together)

She now knows that Carmilla’s favourite colour is dark yellow, and that she loves reading gothic classics (of course), and that her favourite smell is vanilla. Carmilla knows that Laura has a thing about sweet food, and that she’s an aspiring journalist, and that once when she was little she climbed a tree trying to rescue a cat and broke her arm.

Laura still doesn’t know why Carmilla cries in her sleep, but maybe that’s a story for another day.

As she’s climbing under the covers, she hears a sound at the window, and smiles when she realises that it’s the black kitten. She lets it in, and as it’s cuddling into its favourite position against her, she has the strangest thought that it has Carmilla’s eyes.


End file.
